


Chance Meetings

by blackat_t7t



Series: Family Matters [1]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Half-Sibling Incest, Kiss or Die, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Sex Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6491329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackat_t7t/pseuds/blackat_t7t
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry runs into Thomas at McAnally's, and then runs into some trouble.</p>
<p>Set between Death Masks and Blood Rites. Written as a prologue to the next part of the series, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6853744">Blood Magic</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chance Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> This thing is actually the prologue of a 100k+ Harry/Thomas casefic monstrosity that I've been working on for over a year. I'm publishing it by itself now in hopes that doing so will encourage me to actually finish the novel that follows it. But, it stands pretty well on its own, at least in my opinion, so hopefully readers won't feel too cheated at a prologue being posted as a completed fic.
> 
> If you enjoy the story, please consider sharing on Tumblr by reblogging [this post.](http://blackat-t7t.tumblr.com/post/142442640425/chance-meetings-fandom-dresden-files-pairing)

It was late in the evening when I arrived at McAnally’s pub, tired and hungry and stiff from spending the whole day driving around tailing a certain man, with only minimal bathroom breaks. As the only professional wizard in the phonebook I normally refused purely mundane jobs like following cheating spouses. Unfortunately, Special Investigations (the department of Chicago PD that handles things that don’t look so good in reports; things like werewolf attacks, magical murders, and the odd troll marauding) hadn’t had much in the way of mysterious happenings to call me in on lately, and a man’s got to eat. And pay his landlady, and his mechanic, and feed his cat, and you get the picture.

Either way, I had spent a long day running errands beneath my skill and feeling particularly under-appreciated.

Some of the tension in my shoulders eased when I stepped down into Mac’s pub, ducking under the familiar low ceiling fans as I entered. The last light of the sunset was streaming through the thirteen sunken windows of the basement room, catching on the thirteen mirrors scattered around the walls. I could smell a strip steak sizzling on the grill behind the bar. My stomach growled. I figured I’d earned a good meal, if for nothing else than simply suffering through a day of utter boredom without setting anything on fire. I ordered at the bar and then took a seat at one of the empty tables, cradling my head in my hands and massaging my temples. I wanted nothing more than to enjoy a beer and a steak sandwich before crawling into bed and sleeping until I had to meet up with my client, the woman scorned herself, at noon tomorrow.

But these things never seem to work out the way I want them to.

“Can I join you?” a somewhat familiar voice asked, and I glanced up to see a man standing next to my table, head tilted to one side in question. He had grey eyes and dark hair that fell in soft curls to brush his shoulders, which were bare except for the fishnet shirt he wore with dark, tight jeans. The outfit would have looked ridiculous on most guys, but he somehow made it work. The man was incredibly, deliciously, obnoxiously attractive.

Emphasis on obnoxiously.

I scowled at Thomas, intending to communicate without words that I didn’t want his company. He didn’t seem to take the hint. Instead he straightened his head, tossing a lock of dark hair from his face with the movement, and fixed me with a grin that was simultaneously boyish and feral. He reached out towards me, and I shifted back on instinct before I realized that he held a bottle of Mac’s signature ale in each hand. “First round’s on me,” he said.

I stared at the bottle for a second, weighing the chances of him actually going away if I asked him to. I figured they were somewhere in between winning the lottery and being eaten by a shark. In Lake Michigan. I might as well not waste my breath.

Besides, he had beer.

“And the second,” I groused, snatching the bottle from his hand and then motioning vaguely with it at the chair across from mine.

“And the second,” he replied agreeably, and took the seat.

I twisted the cap from my bottle and took a long drink, watching Thomas from the corner of my eye as I did. He took a pull from his own bottle, eyes closed in satisfaction. He looked perfectly relaxed, not like someone who was expecting trouble to break out at any moment. Not that that meant anything.

The last two times I had seen Thomas, it had ended with someone trying to kill me. Granted, Thomas hadn’t arranged those attempted hits, and he had actually helped me survive both of them, but that still didn’t change the fact that he was trouble, just by being what he was. The fact that I couldn’t even begin to guess a vampire’s reasons for helping a wizard only made me less inclined to trust him.

Thomas set his beer down, his tongue flicking out over his lips in a way that somehow drew the mind to indecent things, even though that didn’t seem to be his intention for the moment. I forced my body not to tense up and told myself that I was just jealous of his sex appeal. He probably had women rubbernecking in the streets, whereas if I turned heads it was only out of confusion or disapproval.

Jealousy was safer than attraction. There was no doubt in my mind that Thomas could have a straight man begging for him if he turned up his sex vampire powers, but it was still better for me that he didn’t know I’d entertained the occasional fantasy about other guys since middle school. You don’t just announce to a predator that you’re a prey animal; not if you can avoid it.

I set my beer down and leaned back in my chair, staring across the table at Thomas. He set his chin on one hand and looked back without exactly meeting my eyes. (Which suited me just fine; I’d rather not risk the soulgaze that comes when a wizard makes prolonged eye contact.) Thomas’s posture was utterly relaxed, languid and somehow alluring. He blinked slowly at me in a way that, combined with the contented expression, distinctly reminded me of a satisfied cat.

“What are you doing here?” I asked sullenly. “My day has been long enough without getting dragged into some kind of vampire drama.”

“You’re not happy to see me? I’m hurt!” Thomas pouted and put a hand over his heart to complete the performance. I rolled my eyes and he grinned and dropped the act.

“I was in town on family business, but it’s all wrapped up now. I’m flying back to Spain later tonight, but I decided I couldn’t leave Chicago without having some of Mac’s ale. You can’t get stuff like this anywhere else.” He raised his bottle and nodded respectfully in Mac’s direction, and the bartender grunted in response.

“Family business?” I repeated. I wondered what type of business the White King was involved in, and how long it would take before I somehow found myself drawn into it.

“Family business,” Thomas confirmed. “The kind I only talk about with family.” His tone and expression were serious, but his eyes glittered with amusement.

I held up a hand, admitting defeat. “Fine. Keep your family business. I don’t want to get involved anyway.”

Thomas laughed. I scowled. He took another drink. I did the same.

“I saw you sitting alone and figured I’d offer you the pleasure of my company,” Thomas continued after putting down his bottle. “If I’m not wanted, though, I’ll leave.”

I eyed him, wondering if he really would leave, and if he really was here for reasons that didn’t involve putting me in danger- or pulling me out of it. Maybe my sensible side won out, telling me I shouldn’t offend someone who had been an ally to me in the past. Maybe it was the insensible side, telling me that I should put aside my misgivings and become better acquainted with the gorgeous vampire. Or maybe I’d just had a rough day and he still owed me a beer.

“Not until you’ve bought the second round,” I told him. He grinned and waved to Mac, who set two more beers and my steak sandwich on the bar for pickup. Thomas fetched them, paying for my dinner as well as the drinks. If it had been anyone else I might have objected, but Thomas’s family was loaded; he could afford to treat me.

We talked while I ate, about things completely unrelated to our past run-ins, and I found myself relaxing a bit. Thomas told me about his family’s villa in southern Spain, where he’d been staying with Justine, his girlfriend and the human he primarily fed off of, before being called to Chicago. I tried not to feel too jealous. I told him about my latest case taking pictures of a cheating husband, and he ribbed me about my less than glamorous lifestyle. I recounted my daring rescue of a client’s missing pug from a small troll, which had Thomas laughing at my expense. The joke was on him, though, because the reward the client had set for the recovery of her dog was more than five times what I would have charged if she’d come to me, and I had lived well for the next few weeks.

We went back and forth, trading stories and good-natured insults, until Mac came over and picked up my empty plate. It was unusual for him to actually come out from behind the bar, and I looked after him as he retreated back behind it. Then I looked around the room and suddenly realized that it had emptied out, and we were the last ones there. As eager as I had been to get home when I’d arrived, I had stuck around long after finishing my sandwich. Thomas was good company, when I wasn’t in his company because of some paranormal threat, and I had been so caught up in talking to him that I hadn’t realized how much time was passing. Even now, I found myself reluctant to leave.

I cut off that line of thought quickly, though, because I doubted it would lead anywhere good. I reminded myself that I didn’t know Thomas’s motives for approaching me, and that for all I knew it might be his powers that were responsible for wearing down my emotional defenses. Or maybe this was just good old-fashioned magicless manipulation as part of some trap I wouldn't recognize until it sprang shut on me. I didn’t want to like the vampire, I told myself, because liking him would make it harder to keep my guard up around him, and I couldn’t afford to do otherwise.

Thomas was in the middle of a story about a misunderstanding he and Justine had had with a Spanish cabbie that would have had me howling with laughter half a minute before, but my cheerful mood had been ruined and all I managed was a wan smile in response. He noticed, being the attentive conversation partner he was, and he stopped speaking, looking at me with something unnervingly close to concern.

“It’s getting late,” I said, suddenly wanting to cut him off before he could ask if I was alright. The last thing I needed was the person I was trying to remain suspicious of acting worried about me. “I’ve had a really long day, and I should be getting home.”

“Of course,” Thomas said smoothly. He rose to his feet while glancing at his watch, as though he too had lost track of the time. “And I should be getting to the airport. I can’t afford to miss my flight.”

Thomas had paid for everything when he’d picked it up from the bar, so there was no outstanding tab. We left the pub more or less together, walking out into the dimly lit parking lot. There were only three cars there: my trusty Blue Beetle, Mac’s white TransAm, and a white high-end sedan that I supposed must be Thomas’s rental.

As we moved towards the cars, the nearest streetlight suddenly flickered and went dark. Thomas looked at me and I held my hands up defensively. “Not my fault!”

We both looked back to the street and realized at almost the same time that the light nearest us was just one of a series of similar outages, spreading out from somewhere to our right. To the left windows and streetlights continued to wink out, leaving darkness in their wake.

It could have been something totally mundane, like a power outage. On a clear night. With no rain in the forecast for the entire state. Hey, stranger things have happened.

But just in case this wasn’t one of them, I shook out my shield bracelet as I approached the street. I glanced back at Thomas, wondering if this was part of something he’d planned on getting me caught up in, but he looked just as uneasy as I felt. I reached for the pentacle I wore around my neck and sent a bit of will through it, infusing it with a soft blue glow. I held it up as I walked past the parked cars and out onto the street, looking cautiously around.

A sudden scream split the air, coming from the same direction as the outages.

I tensed, waiting for something to attack me, but nothing came. The darkness around me remained still and empty. Whatever was here, it wasn’t coming for me; not yet, anyway.

Two blocks over, a woman kept screaming.

I ground my teeth. There was more than enough time for me to make an escape, but I couldn’t just let whatever had shown up continue terrorizing innocent people. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not one to leave a damsel in distress.

I drew my blasting rod from inside my duster and started forward in the direction of the screams. Thomas was at my side in an instant, laying a hand on my shoulder and hissing “Wait!” I turned back to him while tightening my grip on my blasting rod, annoyed and suspicious all at once.

“Whatever is doing this, it isn’t here for you. Are you really going to go looking for it?” His voice was low and his expression intense with what appeared to be genuine concern. It unnerved me, mostly because it set off a niggling guilt over being suspicious of someone who was trying to look out for me, but I covered up both emotions with sheer pigheadedness.

I shifted my jaw into a stubborn set and replied, “Yes,” like I was insulted he would question me. And now that I thought about it, I kind of was.

Thomas seemed horrified by my answer.

“Do you _want_ to die?”

I didn’t bother to keep the heat from my tone. “I can’t just walk away when people are in danger.”

I tugged free from his hand and started forward again, raising my blasting rod and sending some will through it in preparation for a spell. I could hear his growl of frustration behind me, followed by a muttered “Dammit, Dresden!” Then he was at my side again, drawing a long knife from his belt with a grim expression on his face.

“If I miss my flight because of this,” Thomas said, “you’re buying me a new plane ticket.” I snorted, which wasn’t exactly agreeing to the deal, but it seemed to be enough of an answer for him. Thomas walked to my left and a little behind, his eyes moving constantly as he scanned the darkness for threats. I watched him from the corner of my eye as we moved forward. I wasn’t entirely sure I trusted him to have my back, but I also wasn’t about to refuse his help when I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into.

We moved swiftly and quietly down the dark, empty street, keeping an eye on the shadows in case something should decide to jump out at us. We needn’t have bothered, though, because we reached the source of the power outages and the screams without challenge. It was a small office building, five stories, with little shops on the first floor. A nail salon, a tax office, a dollar store, all empty and closed for the night. I knew this place was the epicenter of whatever magic was being done because it was also the first place where the lights came back on, flickering to life just as we drew near. That, and also the hole blasted through the exterior wall on the fifth floor.

A beam of light spilled from the ragged hole onto the shopping center’s parking lot. Shadows shifted within it, but I couldn’t see whatever physical things were making them. The screaming had stopped. That couldn’t mean anything good.

The door leading into the building itself was glass, secured for the night with a second door made of slender metal bars, and I cursed in frustration as I debated the advantages of picking the lock versus blasting it apart. “Move,” Thomas said, shouldering me aside. “Let me.”

I watched as he brought the butt of his knife down on the glass door, shattering it, then reached inside and bent the bars far enough apart for us to slip through. Gulp. Remind me not to get on his bad side.

Thomas turned back to me. His eyes seemed a few shades lighter; his skin too, almost as if he were glowing with his own light. He gestured to the door. “After you.”

I scowled but went through first. My cowboy boots clinked against the glass shards on the floor, but there was no other sound or movement from inside. I paused just inside the door, and closed my eyes to Listen.

I don’t know if Listening is magical, exactly, or if it’s something that non-wizards can learn just as easily. What I do know is that it’s not a skill most people tend to have; especially not in today’s fast-paced world. As I closed my eyes I focused all of my attention on my sense of hearing, blocking out all other distractions. I could hear the sharp clink of glass behind me as Thomas stepped through the broken door, the slight rustling of the fabric of his pants and his soft, steady breathing. I Listened harder, needing to be sure that nothing was coming our way after the noise we’d made.

I heard my heartbeat, and Thomas’. I heard a car go by outside, almost painfully loud, and then, very faintly, I heard a thumping noise, which I roughly estimated to be the sound of a piece of furniture being jostled muffled by four stories worth of building.

“Nothing on this level,” I told Thomas, my voice pitched low.

“Elevator?” he asked. I shook my head.

“They’d hear us coming. Let’s find some stairs.” He nodded, and we moved deeper into the building.

We found the stairs without much trouble, mostly because all the shops on this level were accessed by the outside, so the stairs and elevator were the only things on this hallway. We started up, and I don’t know about Thomas but I was thinking about how easy it would be for something to attack us from above before we realized it was there.

We’d just passed the exit leading off to the third floor when a door above us slammed open and something started thumping down the stairs towards us. I raised my blasting rod, focusing my will and preparing to unleash a gout of flame, only to jerk it to the side as a young woman stumbled down the stairs and collided with me, almost knocking me from my feet. My blasting rod fell to the ground as I braced one hand on the railing and used the other to grab the girl’s shoulder to try and steady her. She struggled against me, nearly plunging head-first down the stairwell.

“Easy, easy!” I said, capturing her wrists as gently as I could to prevent her from hurting herself or me. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She sobbed and turned her head away, still struggling weakly, and I could see the bloody gouges on her arm and one side of her face. They were in sets of four like claws, shallow but long, and bleeding profusely. There was a red mark on her neck like she’d been grabbed by it. I felt a surge of anger but battered it down. I didn’t want to scare her more.

“Is there anyone else in the building?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice steady. Her only answer was a shuddering whimper and a weak tug against my grip. I glanced at Thomas in hopes of assistance, but he just gave me a dubious look. I took a breath to calm myself and tried to change tactics.

“Hey,” I said as gently as I could manage, “it’s alright. We’re not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

“Natalie,” the woman said at last, her voice a soft sob. Her long dark hair was disheveled, half of it pulled loose from her ponytail, and her make-up had been smeared with tears and blood.

“Can you tell me what did this to you, Natalie?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she whispered, shaking her head. I exchanged a look with Thomas, both of us wondering what we were dealing with.

“Okay,” I said, still speaking gently. “It’s okay.” I glanced up the stairs the way she’d come. “I won’t let it hurt you anymore.” She let out a strangled sob of relief and finally stopped struggling, going almost limp against my chest.

At that moment there was another noise from above, and Natalie went rigid in my arms. Something big and heavy started coming down the stairs towards us. I pushed Natalie behind me, taking care not to let her fall down the steps, and bent to recover my blasting rod. “Natalie, listen to me. I want you to go down these stairs and get in your car and drive to the hospital as fast as you can, understand? I’ll make sure it doesn’t follow you.”

She nodded and started down the stairs, looking unsteady on her feet. I doubted if she could make it out under her own power. “Go with her,” I told Thomas. “I’ll stop it here.” He didn’t look happy with that plan, but he nodded and went after the girl. Natalie’s expression changed when she saw him, going from terrified to almost dreamy. I hoped I hadn’t just given her over from one dangerous being to another. I had no time to worry about it, though, because the thing that had attacked her had just come into view at the top of the stairs.

It was hunched over, like an ape or a man crawling on his hands, but it looked like it would have been as tall as me standing upright. It was built sturdier than me, though, probably outweighing me by at least a hundred pound. It was covered in thick grey fur and little else, and its face bulged forward in a short snout full of curved fangs. Its claw-like hands (or hand-like claws?) were stained red with Natalie’s blood.

When it saw us it paused, shifting its weight back like a cat about to pounce. I raised my blasting rod to bear and braced myself as best I could on the uneven staircase. Before I could get the shot off, the thing leapt into the air, sailing with inhuman grace over my head towards where Natalie stood on the landing below me, frozen with fear.

Thomas wasn’t frozen, though, and with a sweep of his leg and a thrust of his arm he sent Natalie sliding on her bottom down the stairs and out of the way, then brought up his knife to slash at the monster’s legs. It howled in rage as the blade bit into its forelimb and lashed out at Thomas with its back claws as it sailed past, shoving him against the wall and opening a series of ragged gashes in his arm. The creature fell on the landing a few feet from Thomas, unable to keep its legs. On the steps below it, Natalie scrambled to her feet and started running, stumbling, down the stairs. She crashed into the wall, righted herself, and with a terrified glance up at me, kept going. The monster’s hulking form straightened up and it started to follow her, completely ignoring me and Thomas.

That was a mistake.

I thrust my right hand towards the monster, fingers curled into a fist, and triggered the little silver ring that stored up kinetic energy every time I moved my arm. A discharge of pure force a thousand times what any man could deliver with a mere punch slammed the thing through the wall of the stairwell and out onto the third floor. It hadn’t hit squarely, though, and the blast also tore through the landing where the creature had been, leaving a gaping hole in the stairs.

Through the hole I saw Natalie on the landing a floor below us, her path suddenly blocked by huge chunks of concrete. She looked up at me through the hole, her brown eyes wide with fear. “Go!” I ordered, and she started clambering over the rubble.

I looked to Thomas and saw that blood a little too pale to be human was flowing freely from the wounds on his arm. They were deep enough that I could see the white of his bones through the pinkish blood. My stomach twisted with nausea and guilt, and I had to fight the sudden urge to be sick. He hadn’t even wanted to get involved in this, but he’d been hurt because he was helping me.

I took a step towards him, about to tell him to lie still and let me look at the damage, but Thomas just pushed himself to his feet with a groan and retrieved his knife from where he’d dropped it. The cuts were starting to close as I watched, and he paid them little mind. “We’d better go too,” Thomas said.

I nodded, still feeling a bit light-headed. I looked down at the hole in the stairs below me, wondering if I could climb down to the pile of rubble below without breaking my neck.

Before I had the chance to try it, a low growl brought my attention to the hole I’d blown in the wall. The creature shoved its way through the opening, tearing it wider as it shouldered chucks of concrete out of the way. It looked none the worse for having been blown through a wall; only angrier now that its intended target had gotten away. Its eyes, slit-pupiled and bright yellow-green like a cat’s, focused on Thomas and then on me.

“Go!” Thomas yelled, running up the stairs towards me. He shoved me ahead of him, and I went. We scrambled up the steps, past the doorway to the fourth floor. The creature followed, but the cut Thomas had put on its front leg seemed to slow it somewhat, and we remained out of its reach.

When we were a few steps away from the landing on the fifth floor, I leaned over the railing to look at the creature below us, lifted my blasting rod, and barked, “Fuego!” A column of fire sprang forth to engulf the creature, setting the drywall around it aflame and slagging the metal railing before me in the process.

Something went wrong. I could feel it at the moment of impact, like my spell had hit a wall of foreign magic. It didn’t have the odd, alien feel of faerie spellwork, nor the cold feel of vampire magic. Whoever had woven this spell, and probably summoned this monster and set it on Natalie, they were human.

I didn’t have much chance to dwell on that, though, because the moment after my spell hit the creature writhed like a hound shaking off water, and tongues of fire flew everywhere- including back at me. I yelped and dropped to the ground, all thoughts of spells and summoners forgotten. I would have fallen down the stairs if Thomas hadn’t grabbed hold of my arm. He hauled me back up, and we both looked down to see the stairwell burning and the creature unscathed.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “That’s just not fair.” The creature jerked its head up to look at me, and I could have sworn its expression was one of jeering smugness.

“Come on.” Thomas pulled me by the arm towards the doorway to the fifth floor, the only path available to us. The door itself had been torn from its hinges and lay bent in half over the landing, partially blocking our route. Thomas let go of my arm and hefted the broken door like it weighed nothing. “Down!” he ordered. I ducked. He lobbed the door past me and into the oncoming creature with enough force to send it sprawling down the flight of stairs, then grabbed my wrist again and dragged me through the open doorway.

We found ourselves on what had once been a floor of cubicles, until something had upended most of them and blown out the far wall. The lights closest to the hole in the wall were still on, though one of the light fixtures had been torn from the ceiling and dangled by a conduit pipe and some wires. Other than that, the floor was dark.

A flash of movement in the shadows drew my eye, and I threw up my blasting rod. The spell was on my lips when Thomas grabbed my wrist, and I stopped mid-syllable.

“Don’t shoot,” a high, scared voice said. A pair of hands rose from behind an overturned desk, and a young woman slowly emerged from behind it.

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed. That was the second time tonight I’d nearly incinerated an innocent bystander.

“Harry, we can’t stay here,” Thomas said. “That thing is coming.”

“Right,” I muttered, closing my eyes in an attempt to gather my wits. They were thoroughly shaken from the adrenaline, though, and it took a moment to get them to cooperate.

“Stairs are out,” Thomas continued. His wits seemed to be working just fine. “The elevator must be around here somewhere.”

I opened my eyes and saw the girl in front of me, still standing behind the overturned desk as if it had any hope of shielding her from the rampaging monster- or from us. I stretched out a hand towards her. “We’re not going to hurt you, miss, but we need to leave right now.”

Thomas wasn’t waiting around for her to decide we were the good guys. He spotted an elevator and started dragging me towards it, hand still wrapped around my blasting wrist. I noticed that although his arm was still slick with blood, the wounds had completely healed.

“Wait,” I said, but he didn’t. “Wizards and elevators- we don’t really get on too well.”

“Are you saying you’ll break it?” Thomas demanded.

“I’m saying the last time I got in one to escape a monster I barely avoided recreating the ending scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!” The words tumbled from my mouth in a rush and left Thomas staring at me, like he was trying to decide if he wanted to be skeptical or horrified.

“There’s a fire escape on the other side of the building,” a woman’s voice broke in. I blinked and turned to the speaker, the young woman who was still standing behind the fallen desk, watching Thomas and me with a look of wary apprehension. It was a remarkably rational suggestion, which in my experience was fairly unusual to hear from someone who’d just been unceremoniously thrown into an encounter with things science couldn’t explain.

I took a good look at her for the first time. She had long dark hair, East Asian features, and a pair of wire-framed glasses that gave her a brainy, quiet look. She had no injuries, so either the creature had been ignoring her or it hadn’t known she was there. Considering how strong a wolf’s sense of smell is, and how single-mindedly this monster had pursued Natalie, I was putting my money on the former. With any luck, that would give her a measure of protection now that it was coming back this way.

Speaking of which-

I looked over at the door to the stairwell just in time. While we had been standing around talking, the creature had gained the landing. Its hulking shape emerged from the doorway between us and the girl, who still stood in the ruined office, but it faced Thomas and me completely and paid her no mind.

“It’s not after you,” I told her, keeping my eyes on the threat before me. “Run for the fire escape and get out.” The girl didn’t need to be told twice. She took off down the hall, hair flying out behind her. The creature glanced over its shoulder at the movement, then dismissed her and turned its gaze back to us.

“Guess we’ll have to take our chances with the elevator,” Thomas said, taking a step back while keeping his eyes trained on the monster. His hand was like a band of steel on my wrist, and I was forced to step back with him. 

“Wait, wait,” I muttered, twisting away from him and raising my blasting rod.

“It won’t work! Just run!” Thomas yelled as the thing started to charge us.

I ignored him and took aim, not at the creature itself, but at the ground just in front of it. A blasting rod isn’t the most versatile tool in a magical arsenal, being designed mostly to focus fire spells, but in a pinch it can be used for other things as well. Like, say, spells involving kinetic force.

With a cry I unleashed a blast into the floor directly between us and the oncoming monster. A spider web of fissures shot through the floor. The creature’s paws slammed onto the weakened concrete and it shattered like a film of dried mud, collapsing with a roar into a hole that spanned the width of the hallway. There was a deafening crash as the force of my blast and the weight of the rubble broke through the floor on the level below us, and the level below that, and so on until the crashing ceased and there was only the crackle of bits of debris coming loose.

As the billowing cement dust settled, I moved closer and peered down into the hole. I could see clearly down to the first floor, where a single clawed hand protruded from a mountain of wreckage. Thomas came to stand next to me, leaning over to look at the destruction I’d wrought.

“Not bad,” he said thoughtfully. “If hitting the monster won’t work, aim at what’s around it. Clever.”

I flashed him a tired grin. “And you thought I was just a pretty face.” Thomas made a noise of disbelief and shook his head at me, but he was smiling when he did it.

There was a sudden, deceptively soft crackling sound, and I felt the edge we were standing on shift beneath my feet. Thomas and I both froze and looked at one another. I started to move towards more stable ground, but the moment my weight shifted there was another crack. Before either of us could do anything the floor fell away and we dropped.

I flailed my limbs on instinct but caught nothing; I couldn’t process what I was seeing fast enough to find something to grab onto. Apparently Thomas could, however, because his hand found my wrist and jerked me to a sudden stop that sent pain flaring up my arm. I guess my weight overbalanced him, though, because before I could fully process what had happened we were falling again, his hand still gripping my wrist. The world spun sickeningly for a moment before I landed on the uneven pile of rubble, hitting my head so hard I saw stars. I think I would have done a lot worse if Thomas hadn’t slowed our descent.

He landed on top of me, driving the breath from my body again. I heard a bone snap but wasn’t sure who it belonged to. The stars in my vision turned to black spots and for a moment I thought I would pass out. I blinked them away while Thomas pushed himself off of me with a groan, his face gone white as a sheet. From the way he held himself I guessed the snap had come from his bone, and that the bone in question was his clavicle. I felt like I should do something about it, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of what. Probably from the blow to the head I’d just taken. I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on drawing in breath.

The pile of rubble shifted beneath me, but it wasn’t until a flailing limb ripped its way out and swiped at me that I understood that the creature was still alive, and still coming for us. I scrambled to my feet, dragging Thomas with me (by his newly injured arm, but that was still better than staying there and being torn to shreds). I raised my blasting rod- but it wasn’t there. I stared at my empty hand and realized I must have dropped my weapon in the fall.

“Crap, crap, crap!” I muttered, looking around wildly but not finding it amid the debris of the fallen building. Thomas shoved me to the ground without warning, taking on his shoulder the strike I hadn’t realized was being aimed at me. Pale pinkish blood flew as the creature opened up a series of gashes on his chest and down his arm, and Thomas’s face contorted in pain and rage. He brought up his knife, forcing the creature to draw back. It swept at him again but he dodged with inhuman swiftness, darting forward to drive the knife between its ribs before jumping back again. His injuries were healing before my eyes and his skin shone pure, gleaming white.

Thomas fought the creature, unnatural speed for unnatural speed, incredible strength for incredible strength. I watched in awe, my eyes barely able to keep up with their movements. It was mesmerizing, the way Thomas’s lithe body twisted through a dance-like pattern of dodges and strikes. He moved with a feline grace, smooth and calculated compared to the creature’s brute force press. I felt like I could have watched him for hours, but the fight wasn’t going to last that long. The creature was bigger than him, and for all his inhuman strength it had the advantage on him in weight and reach. And Thomas knew it.

He looked back at me and seemed surprised that I was still there. “Go!” Thomas snarled, turning away from me to dodge another attack. “Get out of here, Harry!”

His voice seemed to break me from a trance, and I started thinking clearly again. There was no way I could leave him to deal with the thing on his own; not after I had dragged him into this mess. I had to do something. I still couldn’t find my blasting rod, and there was no time to go looking for it- but it wasn’t strictly necessary for working spells. A focus helps channel magic, giving it pre-defined bounds, and without one a wizard has to impose those bounds with his own thoughts- or do without, and let the unfocused energy run rampant.

I pulled together the anger I felt at this thing, for hurting Thomas, and Natalie, for shaking off my previous spell, and for derailing what had otherwise been a good end to a very trying day. Emotions feed magic, make it stronger, sharper, and I had plenty of them. “Thomas, get down!” I shouted, and to his credit he flung himself to the ground without hesitation. I held out my hand and cried, “Forzare!”

The spell hit the creature with a concussive force, blasting it and most of the pile of rubble it was standing on through a wall and down the hallway Thomas and I had entered from. The energy left my body in a rush, and that combined with the pounding I still felt in my head made me wobble on my feet. I leaned against the wall to catch my breath, watching Thomas as he picked himself up. The wound on his chest was still visible, not closing as quickly as the previous one had, and I took that to mean that he didn’t have much energy left. I didn’t know how much longer he would have lasted if I had left him to fight that thing alone. I shuddered, not wanting to think of what might have happened to him.

Thomas surveyed the damage and then looked over at me, his expression one of mixed gratitude and respect. He nodded to me, impressed, and I nodded in return. Then we both heard the sound of chunks of concrete beginning to shift. “Oh, come _on_!” I complained, letting my head fall back against the wall with an unpleasant thump. “That’s completely unfair!”

Thomas grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me with him down the hallway. Past the entrance to the stairwell, from which I could smell smoke and hear the crackle of flames, there was another door that led to a hallway full of little offices, probably for the management of the shops on this floor. I didn’t get much time to look at them, though, because Thomas dragged me down the hall until we came to the exit.

Like the door we had entered through, this one was also secured with metal bars. Thomas cursed when he saw that and slammed his fist against the wall. He didn’t leave much of a dent.

“Can you blow this open?” he demanded, turning to look at me with striking silver eyes.  I swallowed and forced myself to think. What I thought of wasn’t good.

“I probably have the energy, but without a proper focus I won’t be able to control it. Any spell I try would be like setting off a bomb: even if the blast doesn’t kill us, with the structural damage I’ve already done to this building it would probably bring it down on our heads.”

“Damn,” Thomas whispered. His eyes flicked back in the direction we had come, and he tilted his head like he was listening.

I could hear it too, above the crackle of the flames on the floors above us: the sound of the creature coming closer. It was a dragging sound now, like it was moving with one or more injured limbs, and I took some satisfaction in the knowledge that I’d finally been able to hurt it. It was a pretty empty feeling, though, in the face of impending death.

“Can’t you do anything?” I asked.

“I haven’t fed in the past two weeks I’ve been in Chicago,” Thomas said. His voice was calm, steady in a way that seemed entirely out of place given our current predicament, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I took a step back. “Between healing my injuries and fighting that thing off, I’ve used up all my reserves.”

I wracked my brains for some kind of solution, wishing desperately that I’d brought my staff or even my gun. But no, I’d been on a simple, boring case, so I hadn’t brought all of my usual weapons. Now I was going to pay the price for being unprepared.

The creature appeared at the corner of the hallway.

I had an idea.

And immediately wished I hadn’t. There were some things that were just too risky to do, even as a last resort. Things I didn’t even want to think about doing.

The creature drew closer, and I saw that it was dragging one of its hind legs, which seemed to have been crushed in that last blast. Blood ran from a few small wounds on its body. It still didn’t look like it would have much trouble taking us apart, though it certainly looked a whole lot angrier.

There were no other options available. I still didn’t want to do it.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Dammit, God dammit!”

“Satisfying, maybe, but not really helpful,” Thomas drawled. He was leaning against the wall next to the door with his injured arm cradled against his bloodied chest, watching the monster approach through half-closed eyes.

I grabbed his shoulder. “Kiss me.”

That made his eyes widen. “What?”

“Kiss me,” I repeated. I could feel my face heating up, but I pushed it from my mind. “I have energy but I can’t use it; you can! Take it from me.”

Thomas shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Maybe not, but I know we’re not spoiled for options!” I glanced over at the creature. It was less than fifty yards away. I looked back at him. “Thomas!”

His eyes were closed, his expression pained, like he was making a very difficult decision. He nodded sharply, once, his features smoothing out, then opened his eyes and looked at me. There was an intensity in his expression that made me draw away on instinct, but it was too late to back out.

Thomas’s hands locked on my arms and held me in place. He closed the distance between us, his lips brushing against mine. My breath caught in my throat. His eyes, bright chrome silver, had fallen half-closed and focused on me almost lazily. I could feel his power washing over me, making my heart flutter and my knees weak. I shut my eyes. Thomas’s uninjured hand ran over my shoulder and settled on the side of my head, his thumb caressing my cheek. It sent shivers down my spine- but not the pleasant kind.

I was suddenly brought back to the last time I’d been fed upon by vampires, a night almost three years before when I’d been trapped in the dark with a group of monsters, stripped of my power and my clothes. They had tormented me with the sweet drug of their venom as their fangs pierced my flesh. Mere pain would have been a blessing, but the drug granted a sickening, shameful pleasure that made the experience horrifically enjoyable. Sibilant voices and the light brush of claws had haunted my dreams on many nights since.

“Harry.” Thomas’s voice brought me back to myself, blinking like I’d stared into the sun and breathing like I’d run a mile. I was standing rigid in his grasp, my muscles stretched tight as piano wire. Any pacifying affect his powers might have had had been utterly undone by the spike of adrenaline and fear the memories triggered. He stroked his thumb over my cheek again. My vision focused, and I looked directly into his pale grey eyes. “You’re going to have to relax for this to work.”

I closed my eyes again, tightly- the last thing I needed right then was a soulgaze with a feeding vampire. I nodded my head to show that I’d heard and took a deep breath as I tried to do as he said. It didn’t take long. Methods of focus and control had been all but beaten into me during my apprenticeship, and it was the work of a few breaths to relax my muscles once more.

Thomas’s thumb brushed over my lips almost in warning, then he was kissing me again. The pressure of his hand on the back of my neck was firm, somehow reassuring. His mouth was soft and warm and when his tongue slipped into my mouth the taste of him was addictive. I could feel his magic, such as it was, reaching for mine, and maybe it was because I knew what was happening but it took more mental effort than I would have thought to lower my resistance and let him in.

I felt his draw on my power as a tugging in the pit of my stomach, sort of like being in an elevator descending a little too fast. The sensation wasn’t exactly painful, but it was exceedingly odd, and I tried to focus on that instead of the feeling of Thomas’s lips on mine, or the stirring sensation a little below my stomach.

After what felt like several minutes of a considerably more pleasant feeding than the last, Thomas drew back from me. My mutinous hands had somehow ended up tangled in his hair without my permission, and I forced myself to release them. My fingers were trembling. Thomas pushed me gently back against the wall before stepping away. If he hadn’t, I probably would have stumbled or fallen; I hadn’t realized how much of my weight he’d been supporting. He’d drained a lot of my energy, and I couldn’t even feel the deficit except in the effect it had had on my body. If I hadn’t been basking in what felt suspiciously like afterglow, that fact alone would have terrified me.

Thomas himself was looking good. The gashes on his arm and chest had healed completely, and his skin glowed an alabaster white. With only the barest glance in its direction he threw his knife at the creature, which was mere yards away, and the effect was like a bullet striking someone in a Kevlar vest. The creature was thrown from its feet and back several paces, with the knife buried to the hilt in its chest. Thomas tore the metal door from its frame entirely, with no more effort than I would use to tear a sheet of paper, then smashed the glass door with his fist. The small cuts opened by falling glass healed immediately.

Not even a knife to the chest could keep our monster down, however, and it was climbing to its paws when Thomas pulled me from the wall and half carried me out of the building. “Wait,” I told him, my brain working sluggishly.

“Is this really the time for that?”

“Wait,” I insisted. He did, letting me lean against his shoulder as I stared the creature down through the doorway. I didn’t have my blasting rod, but at that point I had so little left to work with that I wasn’t too concerned about the effects. I gathered my emotions, anger burned down to cinders by weariness, dull exhaustion throbbing in my skull, the thrumming fear from another near-death experience and the memories of my night at the Red Court’s mercy. I hesitated, then threw in the lust ignited by Thomas’s kiss too, since it wasn’t like anyone was going to be analyzing what I put into the spell and I really did need everything I could get. I marshalled what was left of my power and aimed it at the ceiling above the creature’s head, and if my wobbly course clipped the top of the doorframe, all the better. I released my spell with a word and was rewarded by the distinctly satisfying view of the building falling down on the creature’s head before my vision went black.

I came to a few seconds later, sitting on the ground and leaning against the building next to what had once been a couple of stores and offices. It was now a huge pile of rubble, neatly collapsed in on itself and burning. I smiled. No way was that asshole digging its way out of there.

“You couldn’t just run,” Thomas’s voice said, and I turned my head to look up at him. He stood leaning against the wall next to me, his dark hair disheveled and damp with sweat, cutting a picture that would have looked like something out of a porno if not for the blood drying on his chest and arms. His fishnet shirt had been shredded in a manner that somehow managed to look intentional and artistic. Leave it to Thomas to pull off battlefield chic.

“You just couldn’t be satisfied until you’d destroyed the entire building.” He looked down at me and smiled, a genuine smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. It looked good on him. Most things do.

“You know me,” I replied. “I never sleep right unless I know I’ve caused some kind of horrible property damage.” I held out a hand to him, and he hauled me to my feet. My head only spun a little in the doing.

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” Thomas said, but he was smiling when he said it.

“You could have let me die,” I pointed out. Hell, he could have let me die half a dozen times that night.

“Then I never would have gotten to collect,” Thomas said. I gave him a blank look, and he smirked. “You owe me a plane ticket to Spain.”

I remembered what he had said when he first followed me down that darkened street, and I groaned. “Oh, come on. You can’t really expect me to be able to afford one of those! Besides,” my mouth continued without checking in with my brain, “what I just gave you should be more than enough to cover my debt.”

Thomas arched an eyebrow, then raised a hand to his mouth. He turned to look back at the burning building, his expression pensive. “I suppose I can accept that,” he said.

I watched him for a moment and it finally hit me that something was off. His lips and the skin around them were discolored, a bright red that was more like a burn than a dark lipstick. The redness was fading as I watched, but it seemed to be healing much more slowly than his other injuries had.

“What happened to your mouth?” I asked.

Thomas’s eyes flicked over to me, and his reddened lips quirked in an expression somewhere between amused and thoughtful. “You,” he replied. “Congratulations, by the way.”

“On what?” I asked.

Thomas shrugged. “True love.” I stared at him, vaguely horrified before I realized it didn’t track that he was implying I was in love with him, and then just confused. Thomas just smiled to himself, and I figured he must be enjoying my ignorance. I scowled. It changed nothing.

The noise and fire had probably resulted in more than one call to the authorities, and sirens were blaring in the distance. Thomas and I both decided to make ourselves scarce before the cops arrived. We walked back to McAnally’s, since our cars were still there, me hoping that the case of the collapsed building didn’t fall on Special Investigations, and Thomas thinking… well, who knew what Thomas was thinking. I didn’t remember the walk being very far when we were running towards the screams, but it seemed plenty long on the way back.

By the time we reached the parking lot, a police car and a fire truck had already gone past us, and all the streetlights had come back on. Mac’s TransAm was gone, leaving only the Blue Beetle and Thomas’s rental in the parking lot. I went to my car and just stood leaning against it for a moment, bone tired from a long day with an even longer end. Thomas stood next to his car, watching me.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “I need to go find another flight to Spain. You should get some sleep, and at least try not to get yourself into so much trouble for a few days. It’ll take some time for you to recover.”

“Right,” I said, biting my tongue before it could go rogue and tell him to take care of himself, too. I’d read somewhere that sex triggers the release of oxytocin, a hormone that makes us feel love and trust towards the person that we’re with. I guess the White Court’s feeding techniques do the same, because I was feeling a ton of trust and affection for Thomas at that moment.

He’s a vampire, I reminded myself. He’s dangerous.

Not to you; he saved your life, another part of me replied, and it was all the more unnerving because it was true.

“Tonight was fun,” Thomas said. I arched an eyebrow and he grinned at me, all sharp teeth. “Maybe we can do it again the next time I’m in town. Minus the monsters and property damage, of course.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked. He rolled his eyes and opened the door of his rental car. I opened to door of the Beetle.

“I’ll see you, Dresden.”

“I look forward to it,” I said. I surprised myself with how much I meant it.

 

That night, when I had returned home, set out some food for my cat (who was angry with my lateness and refused to acknowledge me), stripped off my pants, and fallen into bed, I dreamed of vampires.

It started like most of my nightmares on the topic, with being woken in my bed by a sudden press of writhing, oily limbs, struggling to reach a weapon until a set of sharp fangs plunging into the tender flesh of my neck administered a dose of venom that made my limbs weak. Darkness hid the creatures from me, but I knew their hideous shape. More fangs pierced my skin and I fought weakly, a sickening pleasure starting to crawl its way down my spine. I gasped for breath as the venom numbed my lungs and the press of bodies drove the air from my chest.

Then the pressure vanished, the needle-like teeth vanished, and a pair of lips sealed themselves over mine. I opened my eyes to find that the blackness had faded into mere shadow, leaving the form of Thomas visible above me. The shadows on his face only served to accentuate his perfect features, and he looked down at me with the same intensity in his eyes that he’d had before kissing me in the hallway. Ceasing in my weakened struggles, I closed my eyes and succumbed in a way that I never had to the Red Court.

I woke up the next morning shortly before my noon meeting and in desperate need of a cold shower. I told myself that the entire dream had been a nightmare, that I didn’t know whether the Red Court or the White had been more horrific, but the state of my body kept my brain from buying into the lie.

I almost stumbled getting into the shower. I still hadn’t recovered from Thomas’s feeding, and that was a sobering realization. I remembered his caution against getting into trouble and thought that he was right. In this state, I’d be dead in the water if anything of substance came after me.

I turned on the shower and scrubbed my skin, wishing as I always did that I could actually keep a hot water heater running for more than a few weeks. While the icy water ran down my back, I considered that I would now need to regard Thomas with even more suspicion, not less. I had let him behind my defenses, let him into my mind, and I had no way of knowing if it would give him some kind of handle on me. Like the Red Court’s prey, those fed upon by the White Court eventually became addicted to the sensation, coming back for more even as their life force was drained away. There were times I still got a jonesing for a hit of Red Court venom, no matter how horrific my experiences with it had been. Even if I hadn’t just given Thomas a key to my mind, I may already have compromised myself by becoming addicted to him.

I couldn’t trust my own judgment of Thomas, so I had to default to the belief that he was suspicious, unsafe, even a threat. It would be all the more difficult to believe knowing that I had already trusted him to have my back, and he hadn’t abused that trust.

 

A few months later I got a call from Thomas. One of the downsides to being in the phonebook is that people always know how to get a hold of you, even if you’d rather they didn’t. Or want to convince yourself that you’d rather they didn’t.

He asked me to meet him at McAnally’s. I went, spending most of the car ride trying to convince myself that I wasn’t about to do something incredibly stupid. I even planned on running a certain errand for a client after the meeting, to ensure that I would have an incentive not to go off anywhere with him, or take him anywhere with me. (Nothing ruins the mood like projectiles of flaming monkey poo. Trust me on this one.)

See, I liked Thomas. I liked him a whole lot, and in ways that kind of scared me. He was sexy as hell, good in a fight, and great company for just hanging around, all of which were points in his favor. He was dangerous, sure, but he was exactly the kind of trouble I wouldn’t mind getting into.

And that was exactly the problem. Aside from the fact that I was a little old to be going through a bad boy phase, I could easily get so caught up in enjoying myself with him that I wouldn’t realize I was falling under his spell. He may have already had a hold on me from the kiss we’d shared, and I couldn’t risk giving him more of one. I still didn’t know Thomas’s motives for protecting me and seeking me out, but I was willing to bet they were more personal than just finding me amusing. As many times as he had saved my life, I still couldn’t be sure he wasn’t doing it because he wanted me alive for something else- or wanted me dead under different circumstances. As long as I didn’t know what he wanted, I couldn’t trust him.

And as long as I couldn’t trust him, I definitely couldn’t sleep with him, or so I told myself as I parked the Beetle outside of Mac’s.

 

A few days later I was driving Thomas back to my place, but not the way I’d thought about when going to meet him. I had my answer. I could trust Thomas, with my life, because he was my brother. He was family.

I had been an orphan since I was seven, and although I’d gotten used to being alone I had never really stopped longing for a family. Even as an adult, the longing and loneliness didn’t go away; it just got pushed to the side. And now, finally, I had someone. I had a brother. I should have been glad- and I was, of course. I’d gotten what I’d always wanted.

I looked through the rearview mirror at Thomas, my brother, sprawled sleeping in the back seat of my car. I looked at his beautiful face and felt a pang of joy, and loss. I was glad to have my brother. It just meant that I couldn’t have something else that I’d been longing for.

 

 


End file.
